I can't run Google Earth on my work computer; it keeps crashing. So sad.

There's Celestia:

Oh cool - I didn't know about that one.

Open source too, so if there's something about it that sucks I have an alternative to whining about it.

Has anyone here ever unlocked their phone?

For Luddites like me who are cellphone-less, what does this mean?

This is a bit late but going back to Jon's request for help re the large file. There is another alternative; bittorrent. The BT client, Azureus has its own internal tracker, which is used in conjuction with a site such as dyndns.com. The "tracker" can be password protected so that, on the very remote chance, someone else finds the URI, they still can't access the page.

US cellphones are all software-tied to the vendor. I could get a Razr from T Mobile and not be able to use it with my Cingular SIM because of some subsidy code or crap they have in the software. So when I went to Kenya, I bought a local SIM, but couldn't use it in my phone.

Unlocked, with the software code, you can transfer just by moving your card from SIM-enabled phone to SIM-enabled phone. Your phone number moves with you, as well as any address book entries (in a stripped down format) that you saved to the card.

[link]

Interesting - the ultimate Video Conferencing system. At more than half a million per room, and $18,000 per month you would have to save one hell of a lot of plane travel to fixed locations in order to pay for it. But apparently some large corporations with travel between multiple company sites have found it worthwhile. I can't help but wonder if you could not get comparable results less expensively.

It's not the plane fare that's the killer cost wise though. It's the lost productivity from high paid folks who have to travel a lot. If someone is getting paid in the mid to high six figures and is travelling 3 days out of 5, then they are only getting maybe 50% productivity out of that person for the money.

I'm trying to figure out what model my old laptop (which lives in another time zone) is.

I know it's a Dell from 1999. Anybody have any ideas of sites where I could find a history of the Inspiron line or somesuch?

You might be able to use "Find my service tag" option from here: [link]

ETA: Whoops. I needed to suss out the "I don't have it" part of that.

I'm becoming completely addicted to online digital painting tutorials, and thought I'd share this one for anyone that's interested -- it covers different ground from most of the "Now that you've scanned in your sketch, let's colour!" ones.

Linus Torvalds decides to stir the Linux GUI pot a little... [link]

I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE.

This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don't use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn't do what I need it to do.

Please, just tell people to use KDE.